While the rest of India exulted in the retreat of Pakistani-backed forces from the mountains that guard the hamlet of Pandrass in Jammu and Kashmir state, the people returning to their homes here found only desolation.

With winter closing in on one of the coldest inhabitated regions on earth, they arrived back last week to find their crops had withered, their cattle had fled, and their homes, which had been commandeered by the Indian army, had been stripped bare.

In Kargil district, India's war against Pakistan-backed intruders is the main issue in India's parliamentary elections. But for its people the victory was at best bitter-sweet.

Parts of Kargil town, two hours' drive east from Pandrass, are still within range of Pakistani gunmen now camped less than a mile away from the 80-mile line of control which divides the territory claimed by India and Pakistan.

In the lush emerald valley of Kashmir, the focus of the 50-year-old dispute that sputtered to life again in Kargil this summer, there is even less cause to celebrate. The valley is the scene of a 10-year rebellion against India's rule. While voting was taking place in the Kashmir summer capital Srinagar, all the leaders of the pro-independence parties were in jail or under house arrest.

The chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state, Farooq Abdullah, said the election was not the victory celebration it was elsewhere in India. "We have to feed these families [in Kargil] until the next crop is ready, we have to warm their homes, we have to build them bunkers. This is not a victory. For us, it is the misery of our people."

Shaleen Khabra, the most senior state official in Kargil district, said: "It is like a slow bleeding. Every week there is another person dying."

Kargil is a mainly Shi'ite Muslim town, and was never tempted by dreams of independence from India. Allegiances here are to the late Iranian revolutionary cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, whose portrait hangs in many shops.

Most of the 20,000 who fled during the fighting have returned, and the authorities are trying to coax the rest back, promising food rations and firewood, and money to rebuild homes wrecked by the Pakistani shells.

But the people are not impressed. They say their daily sacrifices go unregarded by an Indian government more concerned with the recovery of territory than assuring the safety of civilians.

"They want these peaks - Tololing and Tiger Hill - but they have no interest in the fate of the people living here," said Asghar Karbalai of Kargil's Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust.

He cites the treatment of villagers, including those of Pandrass who were forced to work as porters, trekking to the heights on foot or with sturdy, small horses carrying provisions for the troops.

Eight of the local porters were killed, and two wounded, including a 15-year-old boy. The state government gave their families £1,470 - one fifth of the sum paid for a soldier's life.